


bring you back to where you belong

by KayNight



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Banana Fish Ending Fix-It, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-20 01:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19983616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayNight/pseuds/KayNight
Summary: Eiji thinks this land must have been beautiful. All places were once wild. Tonight, under the storm splitting the sky in two, the smog and filth of human decay around him have almost melted away. What they have peeled back to reveal remains to be seen. Life in so many ways has been stripped from this place, its rightful rulers relegated to steel lined parks and thin strips of land reserve for appreciation rather than habitation.But while the ground beneath him is no longer teeming with life or in the hands of its rightful rulers, it is still wild. Enough blood and tears have been shed on these grounds to quench its desire for life tenfold. The streets may be covered in trash, the rivers polluted, and the sewers toxic, but the sacrifices of the humans who live here may just be enough to appease the city. All of that ferocity, despair, bitterness... an area can only take so much before it becomes more than just a place. There are few areas in the world as rife with such intense inner conflict as this city. Eiji is counting on it.





	bring you back to where you belong

Eiji thinks this land must have been beautiful. All places were once wild. Tonight, under the storm splitting the sky in two, the smog and filth of human decay around him have almost melted away. What they have peeled back to reveal remains to be seen. Life in so many ways has been stripped from this place, its rightful rulers relegated to steel lined parks and thin strips of land reserve for appreciation rather than habitation.

But while the ground beneath him is no longer teeming with life or in the hands of its rightful rulers, it is still wild. Enough blood and tears have been shed on these grounds to quench its desire for life tenfold. The streets may be covered in trash, the rivers polluted, and the sewers toxic, but the sacrifices of the humans who live here may just be enough to appease the city. All of that ferocity, despair, bitterness... an area can only take so much before it becomes more than just _a place_. There are few areas in the world as rife with such intense inner conflict as this city. Eiji is counting on it.

Eiji does not know if it is luck or with purpose that the deluge of the city has kept the streets empty tonight. The rain comes in thick sheets, with the fierce crackle of lighting overhead. Eiji supposes this could be a warning of sorts, a sign of the verdict to come, but he couldn’t care less. He’s stumbled many times walking up 6th, but never dropped the burden in his arms.

It should’ve been harder, to steal the body from Alex and the rest of the boys. But it also should’ve been harder for him to carry Ash’s corpse for so many blocks with a still healing bullet hole in his side. Eiji has decided to give greater credence to this act of grace than the ominous storm sweeping Manhattan. 

It is not long until they reach their destination. Eiji does not know if he should’ve chosen a location that knows the taste of the level of destruction Ash could wreak, or one that has reaped the sick profits of his sacrifices. In the end, Eiji decided that it should be the place that knew Ash best, at his most peaceful both in life and death. 

The mud is thick and cloying underneath his feet as he enters the heart of Bryant Park. Once he reaches the center of the once grassy square, he kneels and lays the long bag on the ground. Although Ash’s soul is long gone from this body, Eiji still mourns the loss of the comforting weight in his arms.

As thunder roars overheard, Eiji merely scowls in response. He will not be deterred. And so, he sets about his task. He began unzipping the body bag, revealing the tragedy that lay within.

Life defined Ash, everything about him was so vivid and electric, his presence was captivating in the way he took the world on and gave no ground. Even in his softest moments, the moments only Eiji and Shorter had seen, Ash was bright and beautiful and alive. Seeing him in death, colorless and cold and consumed by so much nothingness, Eiji could feel the creep of hysterics up his spine. The complete contrast between Ash’s frozen corpse before him and Eiji’s memory of the nauseating warm wetness of Shorter’s death made darkness creep into his vision. The inevitable onset of a panic attack was looming and Eiji felt helpless to stop it, a mindless chorus of Ash screaming, begging, for them to spared and the sound of gunfire. 

He feels his spine arch with the beginning of a retch, bile hot and sickly sweet rising in his throat – but words spill out instead.

“He’s fed you well, hasn’t he? Many have done it for so much longer or so much more, but no one quite like him.”

It’s easier, once his thoughts are out in the open, to channel his near hysteria into a low burning fury. Anger, he can handle. Anger is something he work with, something he can channel, something constructive. Panic would get him nowhere. His request had to be rational and direct. Fury was understandable, but mania was dismissible.

“All of the pain and the misery these streets have put him through, and he’s given you nothing to but respect and love. Did you grow spiteful when he decided to leave? To be free of you? You didn’t want to lose him, and so you took the choice from him.” 

Eiji pauses when he reaches the black threads holding together the wound that killed his soul mate. Subconsciously, he reaches out to touch them, to brush against the warm flesh being pulled together, still raw and itching with the taunt pull of healing skin – before remembering that Ash is dead and gone.

“Well that was pretty fucking selfish of you.”

Eiji is quiet as he finishes revealing Ash’s body and gently removes it from its encasement. The body bag is tossed carelessly away from them, dislodging the puddle that had been forming underneath. His lover’s corpse is pale and bloodless, eerie in its nudity and inattentiveness to the downpour from above and the muck sinking into its skin. Eiji stares at the body, all hysteria and anger wiped from his body at the sight of Ash’s prone form. His next words could have been said pleadingly, but instead they are said without feeling and as a statement of fact, rather than emotion. Eiji is tired.

“I have no loyalty to you, only to him. You have no reason to listen to me. You already took Shorter away from him. And then you convinced him that you would never let him be with me. I didn’t believe him, but I understand now. You just want him for yourself, just like everyone else. His love for you came without conditions, while yours came with endless ones.” 

“Since he was a child - and he is still a child - you have taken his autonomy from him. But despite every constraint you put on him, he would not be bound. And now, now he finally... He finally could make a choice free from all of the constraints placed him by this hellish place. Not because you let him, but because he took back his freedom.”

“And in the end, you just had to remind him of everything to left him bound to you.”

“If you love him as much as I do - and I know you do, then you will let him make his choice. Does it really pain you that much to lose him? Even without him here his legacy remains, what he’s done for you. What is the difference to you that he’s dead or that he has left you. You can’t have him either way, he was never yours to possess!” 

With the fierceness of the crackle of lightning over head, a swift immense pressure shoved Eiji down, down, down into a straining bow against the ground. Eye level with the black ties holding Ash’s corpse together. Eiji was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense memory, of the screech and scream of subway cars down their track, the rush of wind across his face, the rush of adrenaline, a hot threatening whisper in his ear: 

_When he chose death, he chose me._

Eiji railed against the voice, against the force of the words and their assuredness. 

“Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Only he could never see that his problems were temporary because you would never leave him the fuck alone.” 

The roaring in his ears settles, as if contemplating his words before announcing its decision. Eiji does not hold his breath. 

_I will make a deal with you, outsider. He must choose. I will not bring him back only for him to throw his life away once again. He will choose whether to remain as he his, with me who made him, or return to you. I will allow you to present your... argument. And that is all. If you believe so firmly that I have taken away his unbiased ability to decide, then you will have no objections to allowing this decision to be his in the end._

Without hesitation: “I would not want it any other way. All I want is the chance to speak with him again, to give him the choice that he did not feel he had that day. Without you breathing down his neck.”

_You bear a grudge._

“...I would not say that. I would never say that. You gave me Ash, gave me Shorter, Skipper, and everyone who has helped me grow and kept me safe. You gave me a future I never imagined. But you then ripped away from me, from all of us.” 

_You are very young._

“It’s not naive to think that there’s more than this, if that’s what you’d implying. I don’t think that it will be easy, if he chooses to come back. I just think he deserves the right to be able to try.”

_The question is if he agrees with you. Alright, Okumura Eiji. Make your case._

* * *

“It’s okay, if you want to rest Ash. It’s okay if you are tired and you want to sleep... I just want to make sure you have the choice.”

“You’ve done so well, you’ve worked so hard. You protected me and everyone else. You helped bring down everyone who caused you pain. The world will know what they’ve done.”

“No one will blame you if you choose to rest. I won’t blame you. I will miss you, but I will understand. I will think of you every day, in everything I do and see and feel and hear and taste and touch - but. I will understand. I want you to be happy, and be at peace. You know that, right?”

“I love you, Ash. Aslan. My Aslan. And because I love you, I can let you go.”

“They told me you could’ve gotten help, you could have made it in time. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter to me what they think. It matters only what you want and what you need.”

“But I’m here because I want to make sure that this is what you want, I want to give you the choice you may not felt like you had that day. The choice to live.”

“Knowing you, you took Lao’s attack as some grand sign from the universe that you shouldn’t be with me. Have you ever considered that we are the ones that assign meaning to what happens? You’re so stubborn. If you need to, take this as another sign from the universe. One that is telling you to listen to what you want for once, and not the world around you.”

“I’m not saying it’ll be easy. It’s so much harder to live, especially when so many people are no longer with us. You know that better than anyone. But. I think... no, I know you can do it. That we can do it together. You’ve tried so hard to protect me, Ash. But no matter how many times you try to send me away because you think you are protecting me from yourself, I will come back. I’m not going to say I’ve come to save you, because that takes away your choice. All I want is for you to decide without the world deciding for you.”

“I hesitate to tell you what I want, because I am worried about how it will affect your choice - but I also realize that not knowing what I want will also affect your choice. You should be aware of my feelings when you decide, you should know how much you are loved and wanted and needed.” 

“I want to see you in your glasses in a cafe, trying matcha cake for the first time and scrunching up your nose in surprise at the taste. I want to see you with a cat in your lap and a book in your hands, your brows furrowed in concentration. I want to see you at the sea, pouting because I’ve smothered you in sun lotion and now sand is sticking to you. I want you to meet my sister, so you can understand how much I love her and how much she annoys me in equal parts. I want you to meet my parents, so that they can learn to love you as much as I do. I want you eating ramen at 3AM with me flushed bright red from the spice, I want to wake to your face in the morning and fall asleep to your breathing. I want you in every way that you will let me have you. I want to be by your side when the world gets to be too much, when your past overwhelms you. I want to be the one to brush away your tears and hold you close when you shake. I want to pour as much love into as my life will let me, I will spend my life loving you.”

“That fact does not change depending on the choice you make. If you come back to me, you could still wake screaming every night. Old enemies may find us. One of you could get in an accident or fall ill. You may grow to hate Japan and your otherness in it, you may long for the streets of New York. The grief of everyone you’ve lost, we’ve lost, may just get to be too much. But. At least we will have tried, at least we will have lived together as best as we know how. We will have had that opportunity. God, I want that chance. I need you to know that. But if you decided that the risk is too much of a burden to bear, I will respect your decision and love you not any less.”

“I love you. And if you choose to rest, I know that we will meet in the next life, and the one after that. We will always find each other, Ash. I know that.” 

“So... it’s time Ash. What will you choose?”

* * *

An agonized scream rips through the quiet of the reading room and a chair crashes to the floor. Blood seeps across the polished floors. Ash made his choice. 

Months later, under the stars in Izumo, he would tell Eiji about his dream, where he was given the choice to live or finally be at peace.

Eiji simply smiles and digs his fingers deep into the ground beneath him. He inhales quietly before he responds to Ash’s wild story, feeling the dirt buried under his nails and the moonlight seep into his skin. 

“Sometimes the world takes so much from you Ash...”

Their eyes met under the swirl of stars, their bodies intertwined and chests lifting gently with the weight of their breath. 

Eiji leans in, till his breath mingles with Ash’s, an exchange of the life shared between them. 

“...that if you ask nicely enough, it might just give something back.”

A gentle breeze brushes across their tiny slice of the world, stirring blossoms on their branches and critters from their perches. Ash is so warm and so loved in Eiji’s embrace, that the murmur of the world around them and the almost caress of the earth beneath them goes unnoticed. It is not lost on Eiji, who whispers his thanks as a prayer and an offering. 

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this write after finishing banana fish. completely melodramatic, ridiculous. i kind of absolutely hate it except for the fact that it was a genuine outpouring of my emotion and frustration after finishing the show. i might delete this just cuz i'm so embarrassed about it but i also wanna share it because im so mad.


End file.
